‘Bullied’ journalist responds to Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni lawsuit

Journalist Kjersti Flaa, who called out Blake Lively earlier this year over a 2016 interaction, has broken silence on suspicions that she could be involved in Justin Baldoni’s alleged smear campaign against the actress.

Flaa, 51, took to Threads just hours after a New York Times report was aired on Saturday, revealing several messages exchanged between Hollywood crisis management expert Melissa Nathan and publicist Jennifer Abel—both seemingly orchestrating a defamation campaign against Lively, 37.

“Just wanted to put it out there. I have nothing to do with Justin Baldoni and his smear campaign against Blake Lively,” Flaa began on Threads in response to the report that emerged after Lively’s sexual harassment suit against It Ends With Us director and actor Justin Baldoni.

The private messages and emails were obtained through a subpoena filed by the actress, detailing the alleged plot after Baldoni, 40, hired Nathan sometime before August 2.

The journalist then went on to clear the air as the New York Times report drew connections between those texts and Flaa’s viral interview clip uploaded this past August, titled, “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.” 

“I see that things are starting to snowball and people start thinking that I had anything to do with the smear campaign against [Lively],” she continued.

“I also read the article in the New York Times this morning. I’ve been reading through the lawsuit and I see there’s been so much dirty work going on behind-the-scenes. I just wanted to say I had nothing to do with it. I would never take part in anything like that. That’s such an insult to me,” she concluded.

For those unversed, the viral interview dates back to when Lively had announced her second pregnancy with husband Ryan Reynolds, to which, Flaa began the interview by congratulating the then-28-year-old actress on her “little bump.” The actress sarcastically responded by saying, “Congrats on your little bump.”

The Norwegian reporter also addressed the matter in an over nine-minute-long video posted on YouTube in an attempt to distance herself from the alleged plot further.

 “I don’t want a part of this,” Flaa said in the video. “I showed how Blake Lively was behaving in my interview, and that’s it.”

“When I read the text messages that was going back and forth between Justin Baldoni‘s PR team, I was as shocked and appalled, like everybody else.”

Back in August, Flaa also justified to DailyMail.com that even though she was releasing it after eight years, she wanted “people behaving badly in Hollywood, or anywhere else for that matter, get called out for it.'”

However, the Times article pointed out how in 2022, in the midst of Johnny Depp’s legal battle with Amber Heard, Flaa also posted clips of her interviews with the actor tagged #JusticeForJohnnyDepp. Depp was Nathan’s client at the time.